


the shame of your shadow, the blood on your arrow

by thegrumblingirl



Series: the blood ran out and i became a god [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Karnaca, Not Canon Compliant, sequel to my DOTO retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 18:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12138294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: Sometimes, Billie missed having a door to close behind her — the Dreadful Wale had afforded her more privacy than she'd ever had in her life. Anton had been an unobtrusive shipmate, for the most part, but having a room to herself was a commodity that had eluded Billie for most of her adult life. And now, she was sharing abandoned apartments and butcher shops with a cranky old man and a curious 4000-year-old boy.





	the shame of your shadow, the blood on your arrow

**Author's Note:**

> ok so I have so many feels about Billie and Daud taking care of the Outsider together, I had to write more
> 
> it's disgustingly domestic and feelsy, and I have no regrets

Sometimes, Billie missed having a door to close behind her — the Dreadful Wale had afforded her more privacy than she'd ever had in her life. Anton had been an unobtrusive shipmate, for the most part, but having a room to herself was a commodity that had eluded Billie for most of her adult life. And now, she was sharing abandoned apartments and butcher shops with a cranky old man and a curious 4000-year-old boy.

Billie was used to sharing space — on ships crossing the Ocean, in Whaler dorms in the Flooded District, in the filthy streets on Dunwall. She'd never minded. But no-one had ever borne witness to her nightmares after her beloved Deidre had been taken from her, she'd made sure of that.

No-one, until Daud. And now, the boy. They never said anything, and they never brought it up.

Billie had thought — wished, hoped — that the dreams would end after stealing into the Void to take away its conduit, its _god_. But the Void was still there, inside her, in her arm and her eye and her soul, and it would never leave. She knew that now. They were different dreams these days, too, of the bad old days, long forgotten and more recent ones, and of things that had and would never come to pass. She dreamt of Delilah, coming to kill Emily right in front of her, throwing her lifeless body at Billie's feet. She dreamt of Daud, trapped in the Void, his blood running down her arm, dripping from her fingertips. It was waking from those dreams that she didn't mind knowing he was only a kick in the shins away, snoring into an old pillow that looked about as wrinkled as he did.

Besides, it wasn't as though she was the only one with bad dreams. Daud twisted in his sleep, muttering her name, or Corvo's, or the names of Whalers who were long gone. Sometimes, he woke and sat up, breathing harshly, surely knowing that Billie was awake and watching him in the dark. Sometimes, he turned on his side, his back to her, and she watched and listened until his breathing evened out again. Sometimes, he grunted and got up, and left, closing the door behind himself softly. Sometimes, she followed him with Foresight, soaring high overhead until she could see him sitting at the edge of a roof, legs dangling into nothing and a lit cigarette between his fingers. The boy had complained about his smoking inside.

As for the boy... who could even know what he saw, even now that his eyes were human again. The horrors he'd seen, the minds he'd walked — the things people had done to others, to themselves, in his name. Things he had never asked for.

One morning she sat at a minuscule writing desk squeezed into a corner, balancing the books and counting out the money they'd made with her last contract — stealing documents from some rich bastard or other, blackmail he'd used to pressure the families of factory workers killed or injured in accidents into keeping quiet about restitution and severance packages. Daud and the boy were out, gone to the market to scrounge up enough food for a few days. Sometimes it was difficult to reconcile her memories of Daud, leader of the Whalers, who delegated chores and supply runs with as much precision as he coordinated contracts, with _Daud_ , who didn't seem to mind 'minding the boy,' as he'd acerbically termed it, as much as the moniker would suggest.

'We can't keep calling him 'boy,'' he'd told her a few weeks after they'd broken the Ritual Hold, keeping his voice low so the Outsider, as he'd once been, wouldn't wake where he was sleeping, curled up on a dingy mattress across the room.

'If he isn't giving us a name we can pronounce, we've got no choice.' She didn't remember his true name, the sounds flowing through the hollows the Void and the distortion of time around her had created as she'd whispered them into the Outsider's ear; but she'd been unable to grasp them with her mind.

And so, the boy seemed content not having a name, never mind that he hadn't _been_ a boy in 4000 years, and that treating him like a child was not something that occurred to her, nor to Daud. He knew people better than they did themselves, had seen more than she had, than Daud had, had seen all the things humanity had done onto itself and never recovered, much less learnt from. And yet, who _he_ was had been shaped by the Void, had twisted his own humanity into something distant, unrecognisable. He'd never gotten the chance to grow up. But something had hidden itself away, something small and skittering, hiding from the sharp smiles and black, inhuman eyes. His eyes were green now, startlingly so, and among the sharp smiles he still doled out on occasion, there was kindness, too. The ancient beggar and mongrel, to borrow from one of Shan Yun's songs that Billie hated even more now, was a lot like her in that. Time bled around them, and who they were didn't always match up with what they saw in the mirror.

Billie closed the account book that also still contained a few stained pages of records she'd kept on the Dreadful Wale before setting out for Dunwall to warn Corvo and Emily of the danger brewing in the South. They were still in Karnaca, the _boy_ having expressed a liking for it and neither Billie nor Daud being in a particular hurry to leave. The city had taken a turn for the worse under Duke Luca Abele, but ever since Emily had saved Aramis and made sure to instate the Duke's double, things had improved. Only, replacing one man couldn't fix all the problems plaguing Serkonos, and especially its capital city. The old Batista District was perhaps the best example of how Emily had changed the course of history. Billie remembered different things, giving her a headache when she thought about it too much. Two Dust Districts, one much worse than the other, Lucia Pastor's apartment torn apart and infested with bloodflies in one, then cluttered and dusty but inhabitable in the other.

"Billie," came Daud's rough voice from behind her as he pushed through the door. It was strange, having to find abandoned apartments that weren't sealed off now — Daud couldn't transverse anymore, couldn't pull himself through space at will; and Billie would never admit it, but she'd hated the place they'd stayed in a month ago that could only be reached by climbing up slippery pipes and metal grating, the last place of refuge they'd found after a night spent dodging the Grand Guard and their damn hounds, both of them keeping a fearful eye on the boy as he'd kept up with them. She'd extended her Void arm towards Daud without thinking, her hand hovering by his elbow, prepared to attempt side-along Displacement. He'd shot her a baleful look, then slung his pack over his shoulder and heaved himself up with a grunt. Beside her, the boy had pressed his lips together and looked towards the sky.

Daud was by no means geriatric, but the pits at the Albarca had taken at least a couple of years off his life, that she was sure of. He was only three years older than Corvo — the Royal Protector had aged somewhat more gracefully, or so Billie had inferred from the picture printed in one of the recent newspapers, with news from Dunwall, showing him standing behind Emily's throne. But then, Corvo'd lived in a palace for most of his life now. Daud lived wherever he could. His wounds were healing now, though, and as much as it might have pained him (she guessed that it had, a little) it was probably for the best that his connection to the Void had vanished. It could not hurt him anymore now, nor the boy. Only her. For once, there was pain she could take, instead of causing it.

Making concessions such as this meant that they stayed longer, generally, once they'd found a place that suited, only moving on every few weeks or if Overseer presence increased to the point of staying becoming a gamble. They had enough money in their coffers now that they could have even made rent for a while — if Billie's face weren't plastered all over Serkonos, if she didn't have a Void artifact for an eye, Void fragments for a limb, and weapons all over her. And even if it weren't so, somehow, landlords were still being prissy when it came to their tenants. Billie wasn't blind to the picture they made: her, Daud, who was nearly two decades her senior, and a boy who looked well enough like a teenager even if he was older than the bones the city stood on. Explaining that it _wasn't_ what it looked like wouldn't have been worth the effort — if it weren't impossible, anyhow.

'What if you took someone's face?' Daud had asked her once, and _he'd_ brought it up, leaving Billie with her fork halfway to her mouth and the boy looking between them, mute but looking for all the world as if his continued existence had just become _interesting_.

'I'd have to take it and then move very, very slowly, or not at all, even carrying the bone charm that extends the duration. And it would have to be someone from another part of town, so they don't recognise them. And I am not,' here she'd fixed him with a deliberate look from her inhuman eye, 'stealing wedding bands.'

'Fine,' Daud had shrugged, dropped the subject, and come back from a supply run the next day with three different suggestions for places they could move next.

He wasn't wrong, Billie knew that. With the city slowly undertaking repairs and renovations (with generous financial help from Dunwall, no less) and the bloodfly infestations now contained to the point of being manageable, the number of options they had would soon dwindle.

She got up and took a paper bag from his outstretched hand, then watched as he retrieved two more bags from the hallway, stepped inside, and kicked the door shut behind him.

"Where's he?" she asked, carrying the food over to the tiny kitchen island.

"Up to the roof," Daud told her, smirking.

Of course. Half the time, he seemed to be spending his time up high, observing people as they went about their business, no idea who was watching them or why. A little as if something compelled him to keep himself apart, to watch from above as he had for so long. But then, he dragged her and Daud across the markets, crowded enough even for her to disappear in the throngs of patrons, showing off what he'd learnt about haggling by observing Daud and what Billie had taught him about getting information out of people without them being aware they were giving away their secrets. He was not naive in any sense of the word, but so many things he had experienced through others — he knew how the world worked because he'd watched it turn, but he'd never been a part of it.

He'd found Daud's wanted poster at some point, where it still was, stuffed into a pocket of her luggage. He'd been snooping, yes, but it wasn't as if she hadn't read Daud's diary — something even she hadn't dared do with his logs back in Dunwall, but here... once, he'd left it lying between their bedrolls, as if it weren't clear whose bedtime reading it was, his or hers. Besides, it wasn't as if the Outsider hadn't already seen, and those memories were as permanent as the ink on Billie's cheek.

'Why did you keep it?' he'd asked her, holding the brittle Gristol paper in his hands as if it were a precious artifact, not a useless reminder of a time the Empire had spent in terror.

She'd thrown him a sidelong look from where she'd been scrubbing a stain out of her jacket. 'As if you don't know,' she'd deflected, loathe to actually say it, albeit knowing that Daud was not due to return from meeting one of his contacts for another hour.

The boy had thrown her a look right back, one of those that made him look old. Perhaps even wise. Just a little.

She'd sighed and lowered her gaze, her hands stilling. 'I kept it... because it was the only thing I had left of him.'

'There, was that so hard?' he'd teased her, at least missing the eternally mocking inflection she'd come to hate after just their first meeting. How Daud and Corvo had put up with the Outsider for years, she'd never know. Emily had never spoken of him, even when it was clear that "Meagan" knew she'd been marked.

'Shit, yes it was,' she'd grumbled, and he'd laughed, then turned to return the poster to where he'd gotten it, or so she'd thought, but instead he'd pinned it to the blackboard in the corner. 'What are you doing that for?'

'He'll hate it. That's mostly for amusement,' the boy had told her with a shrug. 'But he won't take it down because he thinks you don't.' A pause. 'Do you?'

She'd stared at the poster for a moment. 'No,' she'd admitted quietly, then gone back to scrubbing at her jacket.

Daud had stopped to stare at it, too, that night. 'I haven't seen that face in years,' he'd said gruffly.

She'd walked up to him, and reached out to turn his face towards her. 'I see it every day,' she'd said, meeting his eyes even though it was harder than it should have been.

He'd kept silent, and she'd let him, let him go and gone back to the contents of the rich pockets she'd picked that day.

The next morning, there'd been an audiograph card in the machine they'd salvaged from a junk heap and that Daud had tinkered with for hours to return it to working order, that hadn't been there the night before.

'Billie,' it had said in Daud's script. She'd been alone, Daud out teaching the boy street tricks, and she'd known that that, too, had been by design. Still she'd pressed play.

> _Billie —_
> 
> _I'm recording this in case I'm not there anymore when you return—_

She'd stopped the recording, her heart stuttering. When..?

> _— or in case I am and the Void decides to snatch me in my sleep instead. You're risking your life breaking into the best secured bank in the Isles because I asked you to, and I'm sitting here, on your ship, coughing up a lung and drinking the last of your good whiskey. It's not so bad._
> 
> _I never told you how the Outsider found me, how he Marked me. I told you that I didn't have a choice, but that's not true. Everyone he offers his Mark to, does. I did, Delilah did, and Granny Rags did, too. Corvo did and so did Emily. I made my choices, big and small, good and bad. He might have known, he might not. You were right, he gave us the means to fight back, and we... cleaned the streets and called it justice, or at least some of us did. We made Dunwall bleed for what it had done to us, but — I asked Corvo this, when we fought, what have we accomplished, what have I? More, or much less? Not that he ever said a word to me, hidden behind that mask._
> 
> _There's things we don't say aloud, you and I. I've never been a sentimental man, you know that. Never could be. But if... if this is the last you hear of me, then you need to know this: whatever happens next, I'm proud of you. I always was. Remember that._
> 
> _Farewell, Billie._

Hunched over the recorder, Billie had put her face in her hands and cried silently.

She'd removed the card, refused to listen to it again (and again), and instead put it back into Daud's pack, with his files and notes and books (did he even _have_ clothes other than those on his back?). He'd know she'd heard what he'd wanted her to. That would be enough.

"Has he said anything to you about Corvo?" She asked Daud now, as she was stacking tins of jellied eels in the small pantry. The boy had told them what Delilah had done to Corvo at the start of the Coup, out of the blue, mentioning it over dinner as one would a change in the weather. Billie and Daud hadn't quite known what to say in response. Corvo Attano — without the Outsider's Mark? It was unthinkable, even to Billie, who'd left Dunwall before Corvo was found in a boat, drifting into the Flooded District. Daud at least knew how that sat in a heart.

"No." Daud cut open a fresh loaf of bread. "I didn't ask him, either. You still think it means he wants us to go to Dunwall?"

Billie sighed, replaying the conversation in her mind, the way the boy's eyes had betrayed a sadness he'd done very well to hide. "I think he wants to see him, and Emily as well. And I think maybe they deserve to know what happened."

"We can send a letter for that," Daud grunted. "Well. You can."

"This isn't something that should come in writing," Billie argued almost in spite of herself. Arguing meant she was taking a side when she wasn't even sure if any side was tenable.

Daud put down the knife. "So we're going to Dunwall, hm?"

Billie crossed her arms. "You don't have to," she said just as gruffly. "Dunwall isn't—"

"We're going together or not at all," Daud interrupted her, his expression so earnest he was almost forgetting to be grumpy. Unbidden, she thought of the audiograph he'd recorded for her, the night he'd been so sick she'd barely dared leave him on the ship.

"Daud," she began, and it was as if he _knew_.

His hand landed on her right arm, just above the elbow, and unwittingly she looked down at his unflinching grip.

"I meant what I said," he told her quietly. "You've… changed, but you're still my Billie. I'm not screwing that up again."

It was an old wound that ached then, but even forgiveness could not wipe away her guilt — or her debt; even if he didn't want any of it.

"It was me who screwed it up last time," she reminded him, still looking down at his hand, still wrapped around her arm.

"I gave you more than enough reason to. I should've—"

"Don't do that," she interrupted him, her voice hard. "It's done. I shouldn't have betrayed you. I sold you out knowing she would kill you."

"I'm not that easy to kill."

Billie looked up at him then — glared at him. How could he be so... flippant?

"The Eyeless nearly managed," she bit out, her anger at his eagerness to shoulder the blame for what she'd done taking the path of least resistance.

"And you got me out." He tilted his head. "I didn't think I'd ever leave that cage alive, Billie, and then I didn't think I'd live to see the world rid of that Void-forsaken cult."

She averted her eyes again. "I wouldn't have stopped looking."

"I know. But like as not, what you'd have found a month later would have been my grave. So glare at me all you want, but I'll thank you every day until you let me."

"Stop it," she commanded, and before he could react, she'd twisted out of his grasp, turned, and dragged him into an embrace instead.

"Never," he echoed her words in the Void, his chin on her shoulder and his arms slowly wrapping around her back. And she believed it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title nicked from Diane Birch's 2016 track _Woman_.


End file.
